Multiple genome-wide scans involving sib-pairs or limited pedigrees have been extensively used for a wide number of complex genetic conditions. Comparing data from two or more scans, as well as combining data, require an understanding of the sources of genotyping errors and data discrepancies. We have conducted two genome-wide scans for age-related maculopathy using the Center for Inherited Disease Research (CIDR) and the Mammalian Genotyping Service (MGS). Thirty individuals were typed in common, in order to allow for the alignment of alleles and comparison of the data sets. The analysis of these 8914 genotypes distributed over 321 markers in common demonstrated excellent agreement between these two laboratories, which have low rates of internal errors. Under the assumption that within each genotype, the smaller MGS allele should correspond to the smaller CIDR allele, the alleles align well between the two centers, with only a small fraction (less than 0.65%) of the aligned alleles showing large differences in sizes. However, since called allele sizes are integer "labels" which may not directly reflect the true underlying allele sizes, it is important to carefully prepare in advance if one wishes to merge data from different laboratories. In particular, it would not suffice to attempt to align alleles by typing only one or two controls in common. Fortunately, for the purposes of linkage analysis, one can avoid merging difficulties by simply carrying out linkage analyses using laboratory-specific allele labels and allele frequencies for each laboratory-specific subset of the data.As genotyping has become less expensive, it has become common to attempt to map disease genes via genome-wide scans (Weeks and Lathrop 1995). In fact, large-scale genotyping centers have been established to facilitate this process throughout the world. In the United States, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have funded two prominent genotyping centers: the Mammalian Genotyping Service (MGS), led by Dr. James Weber and funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; and the Center for Inherited Disease Research (CIDR), led by Dr. David Valle and funded by 11 NIH Institutes. At these Centers, millions of genotypes are being generated per year: In 1999, MGS generated 5.54 million genotypes and CIDR generated approximately 1.2 million genotypes. These two centers, which both use multiallelic short tandem repeat (STR) markers, have extensive experience, and report very small internal error rates. MGS reports an average genotype error rate of 0.7%, based on blindly typing Centre d'Étude du Polymorphisme Humain (CEPH) family DNA samples in duplicate or triplicate on different gels (Weber and Broman 2001); note that the allele error rate is approximately 60% of the genotype error rate (as usually one of the two alleles is correct for most incorrect genotypes). CIDR reports an error rate of 0.18% based on more than 2 million genotypes; these error rates are based on four blind duplicates of investigator-supplied samples per 96-lan...